Amazon Appstore Drops Its Revenue Cut To 20 Pct For Small Businesses

The Amazon Appstore will decrease the revenue cut it takes from small businesses from 30 percent to 20 percent, Slashgear reported.

The changes are coming after numerous complaints about app stores taking 30 percent, which had been accepted as a fact for a long time, according to the report.

The initiative is called the Amazon Appstore Small Business Accelerator Program and will begin in the fourth quarter.

Controversy involving Apple and Epic Games brought the fee issue to light. Last year, the game company made its own in-app payment system to get away from Apple taking its own 30 percent cut. Apple ended up removing Epic Games from its App Store over the issue, saying it would re-implement the company if it shut down in-app payments. Epic filed an antitrust lawsuit saying Apple had been abusing its position as a leader in the field for mobile apps.

Apple and Google are both cutting the shares they take to 15 percent next month for companies that make $1 million a year or less. In Google’s case, it applies to the first $1 million a company makes, the report stated. Amazon’s Appstore Small Business Accelerator Program also only applies to businesses making $1 million a year or less.

Amazon’s unique aspect here is that it’s introducing AWS credit options that equal around 10 percent of the revenue and means developers will take away close to 90 percent of their revenue if they spend on AWS, according to the report. The credits will expire after a year.

PYMNTS reported in March that Google and Apple had both decided to lower their fees. That will begin July 1. Google Vice President of Product Management Sameer Samat claimed that 99 percent of developers selling on Play would see their fees cut by half.

“These are funds that can help developers scale up at a critical phase of their growth by hiring more engineers, adding to their marketing staff, increasing server capacity and more,” he said at the time.